Merry Christmas Everyone

Happy Holidays 2021!

This pandemic stuff has made for yet another hard year for so many.

I hope you and yours are doing well and are staying healthy and resilient.

As I am refreshing this post from last year I cannot help reflect on 2021. It has been an amazing year – we released a new book, ran a very successful Indiegogo Campaign, moved across the country into the house of our dreams, I finished my Master’s Degree and we created the new and massively successful and popular Practice Groups. I got to play on some amazing albums and tracks and we have some great new team members over here!

I enjoyed every minute of teaching, creating, writing and bassing with and for you! Thank you for being along for the ride here at arisbassblog!

Here is my yearly Silent Night solo bass greeting for you…

Here’s to a groovy 2022!

Ari and the A-Team (Wolf, Fred, Jessica, Carlo, Charylu, Karan, Howard, and the GrooveCats, Akai, Pebbles, and Momo)

Learn to Play Silent Night for Solo Bass

Easy Version: Just Melody and Bass: Silent Night Ariane Cap Solo Bass EZ Version

Full Version: Silent Night Full Version

Start the New Year by joining our New Year’s Cohort (starts January 13th 2022)

Do the Course with a community of friends, coaches, and homework…

December 10, 2020August 13, 2024

Chromatic Acrobatics (Practicing Technique? Learn a cool groove!)

Color “Outside the Lines” Using Chromatics!

If you are looking to come up with some fresh ideas for grooves, try injecting some chromatics. “Chroma” is the Greek word for color. Chromatic approaches and transition notes are a terrific way to use non-scalar notes to expand the possibilities for your grooves. While a diatonic scale has seven notes, adding these additional notes expands your palette to enable you to paint with up to 12 notes!

And chromatics are a great finger workout – a bit like permutations in a musical context!

In this episode of Talking Technique, I demonstrate a cool riff that highlights the use of chromatics. I’ll explain how to use them in your own phrases, and we’ll also touch on the importance of getting the right fingering, which becomes super important when you’re playing at a quick tempo like my example.

Have a look and listen here:

Follow along with the PDF for this lesson and view the original post on notreble.

You might also be interested in these posts:

Chromatic Acrobatics 2

Chromatic Acrobatics 3

The Permutation Exercise

In our Flagship Course – Music Theory for the Bass Player you learn all about chromatic and non-chromatic notes. We have a Cohort starting in January. Sign up now!

December 2, 2020August 13, 2024

How to Make it Swing in Five Minutes

Make Your Walking Bass Swing

Notes, notes, notes…It’s all about ‘da notes, right? We dutifully study “roots and fifths”, using chord tones and approach notes and enclosures… and then cool rhythmic skips, drops and left hand pull offs… all these get lots of attention during lessons and online discussions. But famously:

It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing

Whether you have many miles of walking bass under your belt or you are quite new to the swing thing, the key is to make it feel good. No cool note combo, or sophisticated reharmonization, or incredibly virtuoso-like drop can bail out a bass line that just doesn’t swing. On the other hand, a relatively simple line that feels good, will get you the gig every time.

But hey, I’m playing mostly quarter notes, so what could possibly go wrong?

Plenty! But the good news is that there are just two tweaks that can inject the swing into your walking bass lines…Watch!

Learn how to construct walking bass lines and much much more in our Online Course

Month: December 2020